A former sergeant based behind the turnstiles at Hillsborough said if he had been warned an exit gate would be opened he could have closed the tunnel to the central pens to prevent the fatal crush.

William Crawford told the inquests he agreed that the failure to close off the tunnel leading to pens three and four was the “final cause” of the disaster which killed 96 people.

He said he had been stationed behind the Leppings Lane turnstiles on April 15, 1989, and described seeing fans rush into the ground after exit gate C was opened at 2.52pm.

He said: “They ran in, they burst in and then of course the tail end of the spectators just walked in, but the initial fans who came in were running.

“I think as far as I can remember, one or two of them fell over or were getting trampled, and the police officers that were in my serial were pulling them out of the way.”

Mr Crawford, who said he could not hear any radio communications because the system went into “meltdown”, told the court he had no idea why the gate had been opened, but saw more than 1,000 fans come through it.

When asked if he considered closing the tunnel to the pens, he said: “It could have been done if I’d had any warning that that’s what we was going to do, we could have done that and we could have diverted them around the other pens, which is the other side of the stand.

He told the court, in Birchwood Park, Warrington, he would have expected officers in the control box to warn him before the gate was opened.

Mr Crawford said: “If nothing was received, they could have sent someone to my position and passed the message on verbally that the gate was going to be opened.”

The court heard criticisms of the way the policing was organised were removed from Mr Crawford’s statement.

An original version of his statement was shown to the jury, with a section which was crossed out.

It said: “I personally thought we were very light on manpower at this end compared with previous years.

“I have worked this end of the ground either outside the turnstiles, inside, searching, or in the west stand for several years at cup ties, FA Cup semi-finals and league matches, with a lot more manpower.

“In fact, I have seen more manpower at this end during league matches. Normally, we have had a serial at the centre tunnel to direct fans to the north or south pens when the centre pens had been filled.

“This was not the case at this match and several of my serial remarked on this.”

The court heard a new version of the statement, without that section, was submitted to the public inquiry into the disaster, led by Lord Justice Taylor.

Mr Crawford said he skim read the new version of the statement and signed it without realising the change had been made.

He said he found out about the changes from police watchdog the IPCC in January this year.

He added: “When I was shown it, I wasn’t very happy.”

The court heard that Mr Crawford thought match commander David Duckenfield was “out of his depth.”

He said: “I don’t think it was his fault. He was put in that position two weeks prior to the match. He was given that job. So the person who put him in that position is responsible.”

When asked if fans who went into the ground and died or were seriously injured had been let down by senior officers in South Yorkshire Police, Mr Crawford said: “I think they’ve got to take some criticism.”

He said about five minutes after fans had entered through exit gate C all officers were called onto the pitch.

He said: “It was absolute chaos. There was a lot of fans climbing over the fences, a lot of fans just climbing up into the west stand.

“There was people lying about in the pens.

“There was a large pile of, I would say, bodies in the corner of pen three.”

The court was shown Match of the Day footage of police forming a chain to pull fans out of the pens.

But Mr Crawford said there was a lack of instruction on the pitch from senior officers.

He said: “The only senior officer that was there was Chief Superintendent (John) Nesbit, that I saw.”

He added: “The priority was the injured fans in pen three, I would have expected a senior officer to be there, take charge of the situation.”

Mr Crawford said before kick off at the semi-final he had heard that fans were getting into the ground without tickets, by paying turnstile operators.

The inquests also heard a read statement from steward Jack Stone, based on exit gate A on the day, who described being offered money to let people in.

He said: “They would hold the money up to the little window in the gate. Nobody was let in using this bribery.”

Mr Stone said the area got busier as kick off approached and the gates started to sway.

He said: “People outside were obviously trying to pull them open. I got so worried that the gates were going to be forced open that I held onto the top two bolts in case they slipped.”

He said policemen then approached and told him to open the gate, which led to the north stand.

He said: “I can’t really say how many people came through the gates, but it was enough to knock me over and shock me.”